May, 2007

On Wednesday, my colleague Christian Beauclair posted about the expiry of the Betas and Release Candidates of Windows Vista . Last night, I attended Kate Gregory's talk on " Programming for Windows Vista " for the Toronto .NET User Group and a lot of people in the community wanted to know if there was any way that they could otherwise evaluate Windows Vista. If you think about it, it's pretty important...

If you have the opportunity, be sure to attend this final installment of the Office 2007 Webcast Series . We'll be covering many topics including creating Custom Web Parts, Page Layouts, Master Pages and integrating ASP.NET AJAX in your SharePoint site. In every one of our sessions, we have provided you with an action plan. Here is the one for this webcast (including links): Download and install...

Just wanted to make sure everyone is aware of this. On May 31, 2007, pre-release versions of Windows Vista will expire. If you are running a pre-release version of Windows Vista (Beta 2, RC1, or RC2) you will begin to receive notifications about the upcoming expiration on May 18, 2007. To avoid work disruption and the loss of data, it is strongly recommended that PC users running any of these pre-release...

Thanks to everyone who attended my webcast on the Business Data Connector in SharePoint. If you didn’t get a chance to attend it live, the recorded session should be available soon. If you are interested in how you can leverage the Business Data Connector, here’s a plan to get you started: Install Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Determine the the databases that expose the data you wish to surface...

On April 18th, I hinted about a "special offer". On May 1st, John Bristowe posted resources and guidance on how to build a gadget. Now the cat's out of the bag - the Gadget VS Gadget competition has now launched and gives you both the opportunity to build Windows Vista gadgets and win great prizes such as a Samsung 40” WideScreen LCD HD TV, Xbox 360 Pro, and a Dell UltraSharp 24-inch Flat Panel LCD...

Thanks to everyone who attended this webcast. During the session at the end, I mentioned an action plan that you should follow if you want to start extending the user interface of Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Here it is again with the links behind each one: Install 2007 Office System ; 180-day trial versions available Download VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) 2nd Edition Read the “UI...

Thank you to everyone who entered our MSDN Code Awards program! We went through the difficult process of picking five nominees for the individual and team categories - we received a lot of really great entries. What really struck me was how inspiring it is to see all this great development work happening in Canada. One of the prizes is a trip to attend Energize IT 2007 in Toronto - we'll be announcing...

Many thanks to those of you who attended my webcast presentation on Open XML. If you missed it, don't worry; a recording will be available soon. In the meantime, I encourage you to start examining Open XML. Here is an action plan for your own research & development: Install 2007 Office System; 180-day trial versions available Install compatibility packs for Office applications (if necessary...

EnergizeIT 2007 is coming on June 16th and it's shaping up to be a very exciting free Summer event! It's going to happen on a Saturday in downtown Toronto and it's a perfect opportunity for Developers and IT Pros to let loose and "Get Your Geek On!". If you are interested in Microsoft Silverlight , ASP.NET AJAX , XNA , Gadgets - we have a lot of great developer content lined up for you. We are expecting...

Tonight, we will be presenting the introduction to our Office 2007 Webcast Series. If you haven't signed up for it already, here is the link to the main event page . At many webcasts and live events, you usually get a slide at the end with a link dump of a million resources. Rather than provide a slide like that and have you furiously scribble down all the resources, we will be posting the resources...

Last week, Jean-Luc hinted at an "offer" in his blog post on Windows Live and Vista gadgets . A deeper explanation on what Jean-Luc was referring to is coming soon! (Stay tuned to this blog for more information.) As part of his post, he also provided some links for you to reference when building these gadgets. This week, I'd like to provide some additional information for you to check out when building...